Snippet #2046390

The Seeker stepped in, as she thought he would, but the situation seemed to grow worse rather than better in the aftermath. Funny thing, that. Solvej was kept from further rumination by a surprisingly authoritative tone pronouncing orders. It was no gruff bark or harsh command but Ethne’s diction was clear and apparently back with sound reasoning, so the former Templar saw no reason to do otherwise.

Still, one mage between her and the Seeker wasn’t much, and she locked eyes with the Dalish man, shrugging and backing off with a quip. The deed was his, if he wanted it. She was more interested in how they’d wound up in this situation in the first place.

Shaking the blood and ichor off the tip of her spear, Solvej studied the battle’s conclusion with sharp eyes. A scholar she was not, and she had been raised in no noble household. But the Chantry had taught her to read and write, and the Templars had taught her tactics. The bandits had hidden themselves behind a rise, which was not a bad move for an ambush on terrain like this. The first shot had been taken only after Ethne had searched the body and turned around, indicating that they’d probably wanted the little elf to find whatever she did, but timed to leave her without the ability to raise an alarm.

Well done, really. The redheaded woman replaced her spear at her back and joined the group as they formed back together after the battle. It still shouldn’t have been possible. Revaslin was scouting ahead, as he’d made it a point to do on their journey from Starkhaven. She knew that he was not an incompetent, and the ambush was not so clever that he would have missed it. Which meant that he knew, and had failed to warn them of it.

A muscle in Solvej’s jaw jumped as she clenched her teeth together. Rat bastard. Normally, she’d call him out on this right now, but they couldn’t risk such an early blow to unit cohesiveness. A Warden guilty of the same failure would have been expelled from the order at the very least. A Templar probably would have been stripped of his rank and publicly tried for some kind of treason, if not executed outright, for demons would have been suspected. It was only made worse by the fact that they’d nearly lost Ethne. A few inches over, and that arrow might well have been fatal. No other person in the group was singularly necessary: Wardens they had to spare, and the other losses would be felt, but not mission-ending. Without the Dreamer, they had no trail to follow.

The Seeker was going to have a nasty visit from her in the near future, but hopefully the matter would be something she could resolve without any of the others needing to know about it.

She’d kill him to save the mission, without hesitation.

It probably wouldn’t be necessary, and she’d really rather not, but things didn’t always go according to plan.

The others seemed to be debating the wisdom of chasing down the thread, and she shrugged easily. Her wounds, minor as they were, had been healed already, though she understood what the bear was getting at and strode to his side. “It’s clearly a trap,” she pointed out, “but as long as we know that, I have no problem springing it.” A short pause, then: “Hey Venscyath. They didn’t use barbed arrowheads, did they?”

The elf-girl shook her head. “No, um… they were the normal kind. Mine came out, er… cleanly.”

Solvej nodded. “Do me a favor here, Hellas, and try not to accidentally kill me while I get these out.” The woman’s tone was wry rather than truly cautionary, and she took hold of the first shaft, yanking without warning. Pain was always worse when you were expecting it, she had found, and tensing would not help matters any here. The second followed quickly, and she stuck both into the sand and stepped away.

“You want to take care of this before we go?” she asked the healer with a jerk of her head to where Suicide was still bleeding from the wounds.

If there was one thing Ethne was confident in, in was her abilities as a healer. They alone, she had always felt, were something that could not be taken and twisted into some wicked thing with dark purpose, and she smiled, brightly, nodding and casting another heal spell on the still bear-shaped Dekton.

“Lovely. Okay, well, I’m not hearing any protests, so maybe we should get this show on the road, yes?” Solvej was impatient to get going. They’d make their ship in plenty of time even with the detour, she was sure, because any friend of Malik’s was tenacious enough to wait a while, but that didn’t mean he wanted to waste the rest of her life killing bandits.

Of course, the Seeker chose the moment to protest, and Solvej resisted the urge to either punch him per her earlier realization or else just pinch the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and sigh deeply. “The boat will wait, I know that for a fact. What’s more, Venscyath here lost her staff in the confrontation, and she needs a new one as soon as possible. If we want to be able to replace other damaged equipment, we need money as well. Missions that nobody knows about aren’t funded that well because nobody’s allowed to notice the missing funds, yes?” Actually, Malik had entrusted a token amount to her care, but other than that and their personal fortunes (or lack thereof), the group was completely penniless. The resources that would come from this, whatever they were, were probably saleable, and thus as close to a lucky strike as Solvej would ever allow herself to believe in.